Week 26 - Cold and Cows

Had our first frost of the year this week. And our second. And our third.

We have a thermometer in our dining room. It has been around 9 degrees (Celcius) most mornings. The thing about living here is that the mornings are very cold but the afternoons are usually alright. The clear, cloudless days are when it is coldest in the mornings but the sun gets quite warm by afternoon. It's been getting up to around 15/16 degrees or more in the sunshine. But as soon as the sun goes down I have to start closing all the curtains to keep the warmth in as much as possible.

The house really does not heat up very well. I've been worrying about this for a year now (even though we've only been here six months this week, we actually bought the place over a year ago) and still haven't come up with any solutions. I'm disappointed to find that the woodburner doesn't heat the house as well as I thought it would (unless I'm doing it wrong).

The woodburner is in the dining room, which is the central room in the house. Off it is the living room, the kitchen, and the hallway. It's all sort of open plan apart from the kitchen which has a door. We've hung a curtain (blanket) up between the dining room and hallway to save heat loss in that direction. It has made a big difference in terms of heat loss, but heating the dining room alone is still difficult. The woodburner really only heats up the immediate vicinity, and even then the most I've gotten the room to is 14 degrees. No way it's going to heat the living room at all.

When we're at home all day we eat three meals plus snacks in the dining room, so it's good to have that room warm. But I've pretty much given up on using the fireplace since it makes so little difference to the room temperature.

We have oil column heaters in the bedrooms, and I find that those are the warmest rooms in the house. So when we're at home we tend to spend a lot of time playing in K's room. Which isn't such a bad thing because we've had to move all the toys into her room anyway to stop the dog from destroying them.

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Now here's a funny story. And like all funny stories, it wasn't particularly funny at the time.

As I've mentioned before, the neighbours have been grazing their stock in our fields. This week they've been in the field closest to the house. Which is cool to be able to look out the window and see cattle.

Now last night they were particularly noisy, mooing in the middle of the night. I got woken up by it but went back to sleep, only to be woken again by V crying at 1.30am. I went and cuddled her and she insisted she wanted to look out the window. I said to her "you won't see anything there, the cows are on the other side of the house". So we looked out and lo and behold there were three cows* there, nibbling on our lawn. And the one still in the paddock was making a heck of a noise calling out to these three to return.

K woke up soon afterwards and started crying as well. I had a bit of dilemma, given that P is still away and I was there on my own with the girls. Stay inside with the girls and spend the whole night awake listening to the mooing. Or go outside to try and shoo the cattle back into the paddock but leaving the girls inside crying.

I figured it was worth a bit of short term pain for the long term gain. I quickly got dressed and ran outside, looking the part in my Swanndri, gumboots and jeans. The first thing I did was to shut the gate from the yard to the driveway, to prevent any possible escapes. They were now fenced in on three sides, with the fourth side being a steep bank downwards to I don't know where as I haven't been down there yet.

I took a look at the fence to the paddock. It seemed intact. There is a "Taranaki Gate" between this paddock and the house. The gate was leaning slightly. I figured they must have trampled over it. I opened the gate and then tried to herd the cattle back through.

There were three cows in our yard, two brown and one small black/white. In the paddock were another 4 small black/white cows and one big white bull who was the boss and kept calling out for the others to return.

I grabbed a stick and tried to get around the cows so that they were in between me and the gate. By doing that I hoped that they'd move away from me towards the gate (and hopefully not run towards me instead!). I managed to get them going in the right direction and got them into the corner of the yard next to the gate. But then we had a bit of a standoff. Meanwhile I could hear lots of screams coming from the house as two little girls cried and cried for Mummy to return. And lots more mooing coming from the big guy in the paddock.

Eventually the small black/white cow decided to make a run for it back into the paddock. And at that point I decided to give up as the other two showed no signs of wanting to follow and once again tried to make a break for it in the wrong direction. I closed the gate and went back into the house to cuddle my girls.

As we were cuddling we realised the mooing had stopped. Obviously the bull had just been concerned about the little one coming home. At that point I decided to just leave the two brown cows in the yard, figuring there wasn't much harm they could do.

I finally got back to bed at 3.30am.

This morning after I dropped the girls off at creche I went to see the neighbours and told them their stock had escaped. M came straight up and together we herded the two brown cows back through the gate, and then M took them all away to a different paddock. I was pleased to see him using the same technique as I'd done (i.e. big stick). Maybe I can learn to be a farmer after all.

The good bit is that there wasn't a lot of damage done. They've trimmed the lawn so I won't need to mow again quite so soon. A few cow pats on the lawn, one on the vege garden and a couple on the driveway. Nothing to really worry about.

Just two very tired little girls and one very tired Mummy. And a very exciting story to tell.

-M


*I'm still a city slicker so I'll call them cows even though I don't know if they were male or female.